TV series that took nosedives after great first seasons

And of course Westworld.

Glee, plus everything by Ryan Murphy.

EMPIRE was awesome until it was awful.

Riverdale

OMG R4 I thought season two of Riverdale was sooo much better than season one. It went full-on nuts, and it tied up some of the seemingly pointless twists from season one, including the random, unexplained “dark Betty” plotline that disappeared, Reggie as an important character who just stopped appearing, etc.

Heroes owns this.

I found Riverdale unwatchable in its second season and I [italic]really[/italic] tried. Revenge went off rails in its third season, I think, and that's when I stopped watching.

Orphan Black, I, Robot, UnREAL, House of Cards... so many others.

Orphan Black didn't nosedive. It maintained quality throughout its run with some ups and downs.

Roseanne..................oh, wait.

True Blood

Oh yeah, I was riveted by House of Cards until he pushed the annoying girl in front of a Metro car and then I turned it off and never had any desire to watch another minute. I knew where the series was going, which was a preposterous place, and I knew how it would get there (preposterously).

I full on agree with Glee and Heroes.

Legion.

R8, I think I stuck with Orphan Black until s3. It became increasingly convoluted and even Tatian Maslany couldn’t hold me in.

The show iZombie had a great first season and ranked in its second for the same reason, but magnified into incomprehensibility. Worse yet, the weekly mystery had some of the laziest plotting imaginable.

R6 and r12, I have to agree on Heroes. It was almost mystifying how they lost momentum and crashed so hard. They wasted a great cast on meandering plot lines that never even found resolution. (The dark future scenes were the low point for me.) I checked out in s3. Heroes was the most disappointing case for me.

Blackish.

Lost

Legion is experimental and I liked the second season. Disagree about Orphan Black not sucking; everyone I know just stopped watching it in its second season.

Another vote for Heroes.

I never watched most of these shows. I met a few of the stars of Heroes at an awards event and they were mega assholes, like Entourage characters come to life. I was working at the event at the Beverly Hills Hotel and I didn’t recognize them because I never watched the show, and one of them made some joke about me parking their car. Heroes was canceled the next week and I was so giddy about it.

I just read that Betty’s mother on Riverdale may be a witch, and that one of Betty’s sister’s newborn twins may grow up to become Sabrina in the Netflix spinoff. That means that Betty and her cousin Cheryl Blossom could end up being the aunts Sabrina lives with. I fucking love that concept and I love Riverdale so far.

[quote]Glee, plus everything by Ryan Murphy.

Popular.

Charlie’s Angels owns this thread.

Designated Survivor and This Is Us.

American Horror Story. And the horror-comedy spinoff, whatever it was called, wasn’t even decent for one season.

Murphy seems to have accepted that he can’t sustain a concept beyond one season, so he does one-off anthology shows now.

Once Upon a Time was a fun concept that spun into an incoherent mess of chaos by season two.

Ugly Betty.

Nashville.

Prison Break starring then-closeted then-homophobic Wentworth Miller, who was too hot for words. And happy ending: the show fell apart, but he got out of his self-made prison and remains hot!

R2 I'd go even farther and say Glee nose dived after the first 13 episodes (which were brilliant)

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER spun off the rails real fast

The Affair.

R29 Ugh The Affair killed itself in the season one finale. Worst ending I have ever seen.

Twin Peaks.

I thought the first season was some of the best TV I've ever seen. I even had a "Twin Peaks Party" at my house so my co-workers could get caught up.

IMO, the second season went off the rails. I really don't think that David Lynch knew what he had and how much people loved it.

I recently watched the first season of Twin Peaks on Amazon. I really don’t get what all the fuss is about. It was unique, but as someone who loves Mulholland Drive I found Twin Peaks lacking, and I wasn’t interested enough to watch season two or the reboot.

R23 Ain't that the truth. I liked it at first, then quickly lost interest for the very reasons you stated.

R32, I never saw Mulholland Drive. I'll have to check it out somehow.

I never re-watched Twin Peaks (though I do have the DVD set) and have not seen the reboot. I was bummed that Michael Ontkean wasn't part of it, and figured that Lynch would go with the bizarro-ness that was that second season.

GLOW, and sad about it. It’s like some treacly Hallmark channel made for TV movie now.

How much do you think social media affects what you think of different shows?

R31 beat me to it! Although I adore Twin Peaks and found the first half of season 2 to be just a stellar as the first. When the series did take a nose dive - it dropped like a lead balloon. Harold Smith and his story line was amazing. Windom Earle and all the episodes that followed were atrocious. Still TP remains one of the most original series of all time - groundbreakingly impactful on the medium and a huge influence on hundreds of shows that followed..

Madchen Amick is doing double duty at ComiCon, repping both Twin Peaks and Riverdale.

Desperate Housewives owns this

I love Madchen Amick as Betty’s mom.

I only saw the first season of Riverdale after hearing how awful s2 was. Should I soldier on with the show in hopes that it picks back up?

That's what was so great about The Americans. It seems like most series have a story for the first season lined up, and perhaps a second, and that's when they start to fall apart. The Americans series, OTOH, was entirely planned from the very beginning (except for that awful 5th season).

This is the reason why Netflix and Amazon are becoming interesting options.

A lot of these shows were only good ideas for a limited run series - Twin Peaks, Heroes.

The network business model simply is not economic to do that - though they've shifted to much shorter seasons so many be able to stretch a one season show into two or three.

Dawson's Creek and The O.C.

I second True Blood.

R40 I think season 2 of Riverdale is better than the first. It found its identity and its balance. It keeps getting darker and weirder, but also a little bit thoughtful.

R41 I agree, The Americans started off strong and continued steadily along season after season. There were also lots of plot turns that felt like they’d predictably go X or Y, and then turned C and I never saw the turns coming.

Alias

Fringe

R28 - I agree about How To Get Away With Murder. I never watched it on TV (only binged on Netflix), and after the Season 2 finale, I was kind of shocked at how much I no longer cared about the show.

Homeland

R47, it went downhill after Connor stopped rimming random guys.

Homeland’s last season was really good, but it took many seasons to get back to that. And it wasn’t as good as the first, incredible season.

The Latino Lodges and their mob insanity destroyed Riverdale for me and Archie the teenage mob enforcer. It ruined the show. Mopey Jughead didn't help. Thank God for Alice Cooper.

R51 Will it help or hurt if Alice Cooper does indeed turn out to be a witch? I am so into that idea it makes me giddy.

R51 And PS, I think the Lodges are meant to be S

[quote]I just read that Betty’s mother on Riverdale may be a witch, and that one of Betty’s sister’s newborn twins may grow up to become Sabrina in the Netflix spinoff. That means that Betty and her cousin Cheryl Blossom could end up being the aunts Sabrina lives with. I fucking love that concept and I love Riverdale so far.

The Sabrina spinoff takes place in the 60s.

I will try that again. I think the Lodges are meant to be Spanish.

R54 The fan theory was that one of Betty’s sister’s babies might grow up to be Sabrina. Watch the end of this new trailer preview for season 3. If they’re not sacrificing the babies to Satan, then I’m thinking that is some coven shit going down.

Maybe Sabrina will turn out to be Alice’s twin sister or something? Twins figure into the theory—the Blossoms and the Coopers are related, and Cheryl’s twin brother was thought to have been “dark” as well, and Cheryl rowed him across the river to the town where Sabrina lives before he was killed.

True Detective, American Horror Story, American Crime

Arrested Development

Glee was wonderful the first 2 seasons,Nip Tuck ,American Horror Story,etc,etc. Ryan cant seem to maintain momentum after 2 seasons on any show,but the first 2 seasons are usually brilliant and entertaining as hell. Popular was hysterical,I was so pissed when they canceled it. Same for GCB.

[quote]Once Upon a Time was a fun concept that spun into an incoherent mess of chaos by season two.

A good example of a concept that would have worked best as a long mini-series or possibly two shorter seasons. It should have ended with the curse breaking or at least switching up the cast a bit. As entertaining as Regina was in season 1, the writers love of her and wanting to make her a heroine without having her really pay or own up to all the evil she did really hurt the show. Same with Rumple - their idea of reform for him was him doing something bad and Belle telling him she knew there was good inside of him. He would reform for an episode than rinse and repeat. It really was a toxic relationship with the woman thinking her love could change him and taking him back when he did the minimal, superficial apology. The fact that the writers thought they were romantic was kind of scary. Plus Josh Dallas did not wear his leather Charming pants as much as the series went on....

Heroes has to be the classic example of this, although in retrospect a lot of the first season was probably mediocre, but they knew how to end each episode on a kick-ass cliff hanger. One thing that stands out for Heroes is how dedicated the network was to it. They tried to reset the series a number of times over 2 or three seasons and it just kept getting worse. I was shocked when they brought it back years later, because everyone I knew had no desire to see it again by the time it was actually cancelled. It had already been given about 5 second chances.

Mr. Robot

True Detective and Westworld

I agree with Heroes 100% and would nominate Sens8.

Riverdale was utter shit by the second half of season 2. Too many adult characters and while the show has always been hyper fantasy, we're dealing with teen characters in high school. It went way over the top and i have no intention on returning. Another nominee is The L World. That show became utter shit at season 2.

It took till Season 3, but when they killed off Charlie in Lost, I never watched another episode. (well, I did watch the finale, but that's only because Charlie was (inexplicably) in it, to tie things up.....

I actually thought Lost rebounded a bit the second half of season 3 until the season 5 finale.

So disappointing about what's become of Riverdale. Have tried so hard to watch it this season but can't get through it. Agree about Revenge; what the hell happened there? Billions has also trailed off for me. It's become exhausting and not worth the watch. I'm disappointed in Sucession, as well. Terrible, derivative writing - although just still in season one. Scandal eventually became unwatchable. The characters were so thoroughly unlikable and disgusting that I could barely get through an episode. For me, How To Get Away... was a disaster from the start. The melodrama was laughable, and I can't get over Shonda Rhimes and the gratuitous sex scenes that are just so boring in all of her shows. I feel that she thinks her sex scenes are edgy – they're not. And it's a bit much with the whole theme of the Black woman who dates the white man who mistreats her, but yet she can't live without him. And, Kerry Washington can't act. The pouty, quivering lip thing is obnoxious.

I gave off on Lost pretty quickly after they killed Ian Somerhalder and the smoke bear thing showed up. I watched the finale and the purgatory-island twist did not surprise me one bit. It was not a very intelligently written show. I loved the first season of Westworld in all its ambition, but season 2 was awful IMO, and it was a lesson to me that a show can be too philosophical to be interesting. Lost prioritized entertainment over a developed metaphysical concept and it sucked, and Westworld sacrificed entertainment value to play out a metaphysical concept and it became tedious.

Revenge started out as such a compelling and equally ridiculous show. Then it just became ridiculous. In just about any narrative, when there’s a fake-out death or someone returns from the dead, the story is done. Kaput. Not worth telling.

68. That's an accurate assessment of Westworld. I appreciate it, but can't necessarily say that I enjoy it or even fully grasp the storyline in a way that is satisfying.

UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT

Agree with Mr. Robot. 1st season so different, 2nd season, meh.

Revenge could have redeemed itself if they had just ended with the finale of Season 3 in which Victoria wakes up in a psychiatric hospital where Emily has checked her in. Emily leaving her there and walking away forever would’ve been one of television’s great series enders! Instead, they came back for Season 4 and ruined the show even more.

Revenge was an unsustainable idea. How many seasons can you watch of Emily plotting revenge? It should have been a limited series.

Do you mean the John Ridley American Crime or Ryan Murphy's American Crime Story?

Because I think the JR American Crime's second season was fantastic.

I think one of the problems with TV, especially network TV is that they don't know when to end it. Sometimes a story is just a 1 or 2 season story. Why extend it and destroy a good thing. They destroyed Lucifer in later seasons. Sleepy Hollow was a good show and then they fucked that over.

The problem with network TV is that they don’t end it until the ad money stops coming in. It’s only about quality to hook people; from then on, it’s about selling.

It's hard to top Revenge and Desperate Housewives.

They both had such great first seasons.

And then came back as something awful.

I started watching Westworld just tonight. I've only watched S1E1 as of now. But y'all have me wondering if I should continue on with it. The cinematography is gorgeous, though. As is James Marsden.

By the end of season two of How To Get Away With Murder, I completely lost interest. There's not a single character I like or care about, except maybe Oliver. And I'm only marginal on him.

There is just too much good TV now to spend time watching bullshit because you think you're supposed to.

I loved the first season of Pose. I hope the second season keeps up the momentum.

[quote]Revenge started out as such a compelling and equally ridiculous show. Then it just became ridiculous. In just about any narrative, when there’s a fake-out death or someone returns from the dead, the story is done. Kaput. Not worth telling.

I actually thought 'Revenge' sustained its narrative pretty well over all 4 seasons.

I would agree that the first season was the best, but I don't think it dropped off in quality as much as some posters above do.

I do think it was a mistake to kill off Henry Czerny at the end of Season 3, though. The show lost something after that.

The first season of Veronica Mars was excellent.

Whoever said Kimmy Schmidt is wrong, show is still funny as fuck and was just nominated for best comedy Emmy.

Popular too, i thought, was fairly consistent throughout its short run, and never really jumped the shark.

Felicity, however, went off the rails after awhile, never to return.

Winner however, has to go to UnReal, such a promising show with a great cast and writing, unique and timely premise, critical acclaim and network support. When one of the main creators of the show left , the entire show nosedived in season 2 and became an unwatchable hot mess. So bad that the powers that be actually publicly acknowledged how bad it was and promised a never realized return to form in season 3. Ratings and buzz for season 3 were so bad that the final 4th season did not even air on already ratings challeged Lifetime and was suddenly dropped en masse on Hulu last week without any fanfare or advance notice.

Mad Men. It got fucking ridiculous and yet not much happened. Nobody would have watched if it hadn't been for the nostaligia and cool set design.

Elementary and Person of Interest.

Both shows did well in their ratings during their first seasons but not what the networks had wanted so the suits dived in and we got hot babe costars and such that nearly ruined them. Both lasted awhile with horrible changes but only Elementary survives.

The first season of Elementary was gold with a tremendously clever finale that had Irene Adler turning out to be Moriarty. There was then manufactured estrangement between Holmes and Watson and unfortunate recurring guest stars. This past year the show finally seems to have righted itself with Holmes and Watson comfortably back together and its been renewed for another season, which hadn't been expected. But Lucy Liu could lose the constant men's suits.

^ it's not its, whatever.

Westworld season 2 had a couple of great episodes but overall it was a mess.

However I really enjoyed season 2 of The Affair and actually thought it was better than season one.

Revenge was supposed to be a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, a tale with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It wasn't supposed to be stretched into the mess it became starting in season 2. I watched for a while longer than I might have, mainly because of Gabriel Mann, but I couldn't take the illogic, and dropped it in season 2.

HTGAWM went bad in season 1.2, and never recovered. I stopped watching regularly soon after the first winter break.

After reading the posts about unReal I decided to give it a go. And I love it. I’m totally hooked. Can’t wait to be disappointed by the latter seasons though ha

I think [italic]Revenge[/italic] wins this. Most of the rest were good ideas that just went on too long. I'm adding [italic]Grimm[/italic]to that list. It was a great idea, but they threw too much crap into the mix. The Wesen/miscegenation stuff was tedious. I have no idea what was going on by the time the series ended.

Westworld had a great season one and a horrendous season two. Absolutely horrendous.

Scandal when it went from a political drama to a Z rate crime show. They keep to many characters that over stayed their welcome Jake Ballard, Eli Pope and Eileen's wife to name a few. By the time the show ended, all of the characters were awful and members of the B-52 or B-16.

A friend of mine insisted I watch Scandal because she said it was brilliant. I watched one episode, I think during the second or third season, and it was like watching an hourlong MTV video with all the quick cuts. I don’t remember much that happened except that a thousand things happened, including the president’s young son being killed. It was just bam! bam! bam! heavy plotting without any characterization or time to emotionally digest anything that happened. I thought it was terrible and truly unwatchable, which offended my friend. So, so bad.

Mr Robot had a weak second season, but it redeemed it itself with a 3rd season that was great.

Veronica Mars.

Logan should not have been at the door!

Revenge was a complete mess after Season 1 r81. R88 said it well, it was a perfectly contained plotline that they tried desperately to stretch out longer than the story should be.

And yes, Glee became the type of show it was parodying after season 1.

[quote]Veronica Mars.

I barely remember anything after season 1 Veronica Mars. The first season was by far the best, although the third season might have been better than the second I also think Bell might have been phoning it in a bit by the end. She was never bad, but you could see certain tics that she started to use too much.

The movie was sadly more like the later seasons than season 1.

Hogan's Heroes, All in the Family, Cagney et Lacey, Baywatch, Laverne & Shirley, Dick Van Dyke Show, I Dream of Jeanie

The first half of season one of Bewitched is surprisingly smart and subversive. Then it just sort of ran out of ideas and relied on silly practical magic jokes.

Even though I still watch it and enjoy the program, I really think Ray Donovan went off the rails. The concept of a Hollywood fixer is a great idea for a show. All of the family nonsense overshadows what could be some compelling storytelling. I also hate the fact that Jon Voight is a repugnant person, but I like his character on RD.

R99, you're right about Bewitched. I rewatched it recently and it really was on a whole different level.

[quote] I did watch the finale, but that's only because Charlie was (inexplicably) in it

Charlie being in the final episode made complete sense.

[quote] the purgatory-island twist did not surprise me one bit. It was not a very intelligently written show.

The island was not Purgatory.

I wish all the people who hated Lost and yet didn't actually watch it could be flogged.

Another vote for the O.C. That show was fucking incredible for its entire first season, then immediately started to suck for season two. The only possible exception, and I am not even sure this happened in season two, was the twist episode where Chris Carmichael's dad turned out to be gay.

I came to this thread, just as I have others purely to say what R6 said !

Yes! Yes! Yes!!!! A million times yes ! The show's demise should be on all TV/Film schools' syllabi.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

No, it makes complete sense if you watch the damn show.

R105 It was bad. The series was bad. It took a nosedive almost as quickly as the airplane did.

R102 Chris Carmichael = Chris Carmack?

I liked the OC until Ryan failed to use the info to his advantage that Julie Cooper was fucking her daughter’s boyfriend. Can you imagine how long Marland, Lemay, or Long would have worked that?

R67, you'll be thrilled to learn Shonda Rhimes is moving Shondaland to Netflix, where she's working on 8 series, including:

[quote]Hot Chocolate Nutcracker: A documentary look at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy’s re-imagining of the classic ballet, with an inclusive cast and blend of dance traditions. Oliver Bokelberg (Scandal) will serve as director, cinematographer, and producer.

If you gave up on [italic]Person of Interest[/italic], you missed out on Sameen Shaw, who became my favorite character. Well, her and Bear.

[quote] [R105] It was bad. The series was bad. It took a nosedive almost as quickly as the airplane did.

I'm not telling you you have to like the show or that you can't believe it "took a nosedive." What I am saying is you should at least have some idea what you are talking about when you make that evaluation. And anyone who says "they were in Purgatory" or "they were dead the whole time" clearly has no idea what they are talking about.

Heroes and Prison Break

R110 You are very sensitive about a very flawed television series.

[quote] You are very sensitive about a very flawed television series.

Sure, sure. So VERY sensitive. How dare I ask that people actually know what they are talking about?

for Lost, I think the island being purgatory, but people guessed that online in the first season, so they ended up going a different route. I think the sideways purgatory flashback was there way of working their original idea in, but the island and the deaths were real, but they all ended up in purgatory at the end. I enjoyed the show for what it was and enjoyed some of the season arcs, but it is another show where the concept really needed to be contained in a miniseries.

I thought Bewitched devolved a bit in stages. The first two seasons were good to excellent, the first two color seasons were still decent - but it had devolved more into a gimmicky family show and less a witty adult comedy, the fifth season was hurt by a missing Dick York, and the show had gone stale by the Dick Sargent seasons. I suppose looking back - even in the black and white season after the first episodes they started to rely on magic a bit too much, but it was still fresh and better than the later episodes.

Surprised no one has mentioned The Magicians. Very compelling for two seasons, then it went off the rails with the "magic is gone!" plotline. Clue: if the key theme to your show is magic, it probably isn't a good idea to write an entire season without it. Snore.

Every JJ Abrams series. Felicity. Alias. Lost. All very intriguing at the outset followed by a convoluted mess. I'll never watch a show involving Abrams again.

Agree about Bewitched. The first two black and white seasons are great, but after that almost every ep revolved around one or two plot lines: 1) Endora gets mad at Darrin, casts a spell on him, and wackiness ensues until Samantha gets her mom to remove the spell. 2) Aunt Clara (and then Esmeralda) accidentally brings a historic figure (Ben Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Queen Victoria, etc.) Into the future and wackiness ensues until they can figure out how to send them back.

It could have been great, but the writing was so lazy.

Skins

When writers pitch these high concept shows like Lost, they should have a 5 year story bible already in place. And so what if the audience figures it out.

As sort of a reverse problem you had Carnivale, which was fantastic but so slow the first season that it lost a lot of viewers, so that when they picked up the pace the second season they never regained that and the series ended on a huge annoying cliffhanger. The writer of the series actually had a five year plan for it (you can find it online the whole large plot explained)) but the network never gave him the chance.

R117 I lose faith when a show like Lost, Revenge or Westworld completely loses its direction, but some people (evident by the Lost defender above) seem to like following a meandering storyline for many years even if it goes nowhere.

R118 I loved the atmosphere of Carnivale but I became frustrated by the end of the first season because the show seemed to be brewing something under the surface but showed all style and no substance. It was like being trapped in a room with a writer who has brilliant ideas but can only describe the surface of everything.

[quote] but some people (evident by the Lost defender above) seem to like following a meandering storyline for many years even if it goes nowhere

Could you point to where I said anything remotely like this?

Or did you hate The West Wing because the President was a vampire and hate The Golden Girls because it was set in Greenland but never snowed?

[quote] but some people (evident by the Lost defender above) seem to like following a meandering storyline for many years even if it goes nowhere.

I enjoyed the middle seasons as separate season arcs, but was already prepared for the to not live up to its concept by the end. By season 6, I probably would have stopped watching it had I not known it was the last season. I think it could have been an entertaining 3 season show (with maybe 15 episodes per season).

R120 yeah it was designed to unfold over five seasons, and unfortunately the pacing was way off in the first one. The creator increased the pace a bunch in the second season in response to feedback and the loss of the audience but the damage was done. It was an expensive series per episode to produce so the network just gave up on it.

But the whole underlying metaphysical plot has to do with these two hereditary avatars, one light and one dark, meeting throughout history. When they meet, the course of history changes in one direction or the other based on who wins, with the final battle happening around the Trinity test in the desert when one Avatar beats the other completely. The people in the show with magic were aborted avatars (ones that couldn't handle the power, like the catatonic psychic mother) or drefeated avatars, like Management. At least that's what I remember.

In a way it was sort of like Lost as far as weirdness, but they had the reasons worked out before the series began.

I loved Carnivale so much that I refused to watch Rome, which was saved when Carnivale was cancelled.

The OC

Revenge definitely faltered in the second season, but I thought it came back strong towards the end of the third season and had a decent fourth and final season. I think it's just the case of becoming overly ambitious and convoluted in the second season, like so many series with near perfect first seasons, attempting to up the ante or add too many new characters or plot lines that it ends up losing the basic ingredients that made it a success.

[101] I Didn't hate Lost; I just thought Charlie was the heart of the show (not that all shows need a 'heart' - trying to head off a protracted discussion about THAT subject) and kind of lost interest (pardon the pun).

The problem with The OC (and the showrunner has since admitted this) is that the first season was like 27 episodes and they used up all the good ideas. I liked much of the second season but the whole thing turned to horseshit by season 3. It got better when they killed of Mischa Barton but they never recaptured the trash magic of season 1. UnREAL is kind of similar. Epic first season, lesser seasons 2 and 3 but I thought they pulled it back together nicely for season 4.

I actually thought the second season of Veronica Mars was better than the first. You could spot who killed Amanda Seyfried from a mile away.

[quote]Desperate Housewives owns this

I thought DH took a nosedive right after the pilot.

The pilot promised a series that I would’ve loved to have seen. It seems like right after it got picked up, a bunch of suits decided to throw their two-cents in and it became predictable dreck.

I really don’t understand shows that burn through story. Or the plot happens so quickly, that you don’t always understand character motivations, etc.

Dexter!

Heroes disintegrated well before the end of Season 1, when Peter Petrelli became a douche and Isaac was killed, destroying the meta-concept that made the story interesting.

I disagree that Fringe or Arrested nosedived. Fringe just got better, and AD's second season was fantastic.

The Strain

I'd argue that Arrested Development's third season was also quite strong.

For the most part, I feel like comedies get three good seasons, and everything after that is tricky.

Agree with Lost, Twin Peaks, and Glee. And Mad Men should have been like 4 seasons instead of 7

[quote]Westworld had a great season one and a horrendous season two. Absolutely horrendous.

Westworld has delusions of grandeur in wanting to be the next Game of Thrones.

R92 the first 7-episode season of Scandal was wonderful. Season 2 was good. Season 3 became the downfall into garbage. It was interesting enough with the political scandals; they didn't need to add the B613 plot, which turned it into an Alias-knock-off. I couldn't stand her parents or Jake, and their plotlines took over the show, I stopped watching.

As far as nosedives in quality, Revenge really is the perfect example. The show was originally supposed to only be 13 episodes. ABC insisted on a full season order, so the creator had to come up with more ideas. Basically he burned through what should have been Seasons 1 & 2 by having to stretch out Season 1. By Season 2, he had no ideas left. I stayed on until midway through Season 3 then just quit.

Once Upon a Time was actually pretty good through Season 2. By Season 3, it was starting to get messy. Also, the show added far too many characters. I wouldn't say Lost took a nosedive in Season 2, but it definitely wasn't as good as Season 1. Lost, too, added way too many characters with the "Talies" storylines. In the end, the writers killed them off one by one. At least they tried to remedy it by getting rid of the characters, but it always felt like that whole time was just a big mistake. I actually clapped when they killed off Michelle Rodriguez. What an annoying character.

Empire is another good example. The first season was great. Season 2 took a nosedive. I quit watching midway through Season 3.

True Blood was good until Season 4. Many critics thought that was going to be the best season because of the witches storyline from the books, but I thought that's when it started to drop. A lot of that had to do with Stephen Moyer. The character of Bill should have become less prominent, but I've read Stephen Moyer got with Anna Paquin and they fought for Bill to stay front and center.

[quote]As far as nosedives in quality, Revenge really is the perfect example. The show was originally supposed to only be 13 episodes. ABC insisted on a full season order, so the creator had to come up with more ideas. Basically he burned through what should have been Seasons 1 & 2 by having to stretch out Season 1. By Season 2, he had no ideas left. I stayed on until midway through Season 3 then just quit.

The public seemed to enjoy Revenge and was willing to follow it for 4 seasons.

I think some people here have unrealistic expectations.

r140, it's ratings went down over time

I agree with everyone who mentioned Heroes. But i thought the writer's strike had a part in it going to shit. And i was disappointed in the Veronica Mars movie.

R139 I actually liked True Blood through the fifth season, but once Alan Ball was gone so was any reason to watch it. The last season in particular was shockingly horrible.

I agree with Revenge, Heroes, True Detectives, I couldn't finish to watch any of them, but I'm a fan of Westworld, I liked season 2, but It's not a show for everyone

I think people today have shorter attention spans.

They aren't as able to commit to keeping up with a series through it's ups & downs.

R139 R143 Much as I adore Michelle Forbes, S2 was a stupid disaster from which the show never recovered

But Ryan Murphy owns this thread and fucks it without a condom

[Quote] But Ryan Murphy owns this thread and fucks it without a condom

Great description.

[quote]They aren't as able to commit to keeping up with a series through it's ups & downs.

There is more TV content being produced now than anyone could ever watch. There is no point in watching something that isn't good.

There is a reason why most "prestige" television on cable/streaming has much shorter seasons than the old network standard. Whenever you are stretching out a story for longer than it needs, it suffers.

That's true to some extent, R148, but I also think that today's generation is spoiled and has unrealistic expectations.

As you admit, "There is more TV content being produced now than anyone could ever watch."

How to Get Away With Murder

R149 I think that’s ridiculous. Why should anyone watch anything that’s sub-par—for any reason.

Karen Cellini, Jack Coleman, and Emma Samms killed Dynasty for me.

And I loved the infamous Moldavian Massacre.

[quote]Once Upon a Time was actually pretty good through Season 2. By Season 3, it was starting to get messy. Also, the show added far too many characters. I wouldn't say Lost took a nosedive in Season 2, but it definitely wasn't as good as Season 1. Lost, too, added way too many characters with the "Talies" storylines. In the end, the writers killed them off one by one. At least they tried to remedy it by getting rid of the characters, but it always felt like that whole time was just a big mistake. I actually clapped when they killed off Michelle Rodriguez. What an annoying character.

I thought the first the first half of season 2 of Once was good, and I liked the characters of Cora and Hook, and David and Regina having to co-parent was interesting. I think they faltered the second half when they had Regina quickly turn evil again. It would have been fine if they intended not to reform her - but we saw her cackle when her mother sent an innocent nanny flying out of a tower and then later we were supposed to feel bad for her because people didn't trust her or view her as a hero. The second half of the series it was pounded into our head how Regina had changed with barely acknowledging how bad she really had been. I thought the first part of season 3 was not bad in that they corrected a lot of the mistakes from season 2B (Snow's black heart was dropped, the anti-magic people quickly killed etc). The second half of 3B dealing with Oz was when the show became distracted by shiny new things - ignoring much of the regular cast and being distracted by the next shiny new thing before really fleshing out and completely a good story for the previous shiny new thing. Hook and Emma who I did like became more and more watered down and Snow and Charming became a Greek chorus except for one or two episodes a season. As with many shows, the writers did not really care about the heroes, and they really skipped over a lot of potential story that could have been dealt with with Emma trying to deal with who her parents were and all of them trying to adjust and work through any issues they might have.

I don't think anyone should watch anything subpar, but I do think sometimes their are unrealistic expectations that every episode should be a master piece. I think sometimes filler episodes are necessary for a show to recharge and set the tables for later events.

I cheered when Michelle R was killed off. I was kind of bummed about Libby, because I thought she had potential and might have given Hurley something different to do. I do think the show fixed a few of their problems (at least temporarily) mid-way through season 3 and it was decent the next season and a half. When you watch the pilot now, none of the show lived up to that first episode. It really was well done.

Supernatural. Sleepy Hollow, Noah's Arc

"That's true to some extent, [R148], but I also think that today's generation is spoiled and has unrealistic expectations."

Today's generation? LOL, given DL's demographics, most of the people posting on this thread are probably well past 45

Angie.

[quote]Supernatural. Sleepy Hollow, Noah's Arc

Which is unfortunate for Supernatural, because that would mean it has been in a nose-dive for about 13 years. Actually I thought the first five seasons or so were decent. I think I stopped watching about the third time one of the brothers died or went to hell for a season finale and came back the next season hiding a secret from his brother.

Supernatural has been nosediving for the past decade

I can't believe that show is still on the air

[quote]I can't believe that show is still on the air

They have a crazy fanbase who is obsessed with Jensen and Jared and will watch that show til the end of time. God, we just had one of those deranged Supernatural women try to come into the Emmy thread saying how poor little Jensen deserves one.

Supernatural was a decent genre show for the first 5 seasons through the battle with Lucifer. That finished the story arc, answered the original question posed by the inciting incident of the show, and should have ended the show.

It's like having The Fugitive continue after they figure out the one-armed man is the real killer because it's getting decent ratings.

24.

Calling it now - Big Little Lies.

Most of the show mentioned here had a good two seasons. Shows typically are written in 5 year arcs with the show bible guiding out what happens (dramas any ways). I thnk Murphy writes in two year arcs then just shits all over the rest of the years. Pose was so good season one, I hope 2 does not suck.

Homeland had a fantastic first season, then became terrible for a long time. The last season was decent. I always felt guilty watching it--esp because Claire Danes was so over-the-top for most of it, but really the writing was to blame. If you want to watch a GREAT spy series, I think The Bureau now has all 3 seasons on Netflix (French with subtitles) and is a series that has gotten better each year. Really excellent. There will be a 4th season but not sure when.

'Supernatural' has definitely gone on too long.

Even the show's creators admitted several years back that it was supposed to originally wrap up after 5 years.

But I guess it still makes money for the network.

Not that the first season was necessarily great, but Mork & Mindy was a big hit its first season, but it burned out quickly and the second season they made some adjustments that caused the ratings to slide. It went from being the hot show that everyone was talking about it (kids wearing the rainbow suspenders) to being forgotten in rapid fashion.

[R154] I was going to mention Sleepy Hollow as well. The show's first season was great when it center around Witnesses Addie and Crane and the Horseman who was death and Katrina was in purgatory. Then it became AS the Crane's Turn and I stop watching after that.

I enjoyed [italic]Supernatural[/italic] until Lucifer was around all the time. I am not a Pellegrino fanboy. I liked Marc Shepard, though, so I kept watching. I have no idea what's going on with it now.

Arrow? To be fare i thought season 1 and 2 were good but turned into complete horse shit during season 3 onwards.

Regarding the whole Heroes debacle, no, the writer's strike had nothing to do with why the show tanked after season one. It had everything to do with Tim Kring.

Tim Kring is a hack writer who has been able to con network suits into greenlighting shows that are basically rip offs of preexisting IPs. What he does is present himself as some kind of visionary writer/showrunner a la Bryan Fuller and Joss Whedon with a "grand vision." He shoots an amazing, jaw dropping pilot guaranteed to blow them away and make it look like he's got the show all planned out with years of well thought out arcs and themes in the making. But the reality is that he has nothing. After the show is greenlit, he and his team of writers just piece together episodes by lifting bits and pieces of characters, subplots, scenes and story ideas from other IPs.

In the case of Heroes, he pitched a show idea based on the X-Men franchise but sold it as this one of a kind, original concept about ordinary people developing superpowers. Then he and his writing stuff wrote episodes via good old-fashioned plagiarism. Yes, the show was amazing the first season, but that was only because the writing was based on good source material. For example, the whole Peter Petrelli subplot about him threatening to blow up NYC is one of the major plot lines of the manga, Akira. (In the manga, a bunch of kids and teens start developing telekinesis out of the blue. The youngest one, Akira, has the power to detonate like a nuclear bomb, and so race to keep him from blowing up "Neo Tokyo". Sound familiar?)

Kring and his hack staff did a good job faking their way through the first season for viewers completely unfamiliar with comic book or manga lore. The problem is that as good as they were "adapting" all these old stories and characters, they could only keep up the momentum for so long before exhausting the source material they were ripping off. So that's what happened. Heroes exhausted the Akira story arc and the multiple other story arcs from other sources.

The same thing happened with Kring's other show, Touch. It was a rip off of the movie, Knowing. It started off strong because it sourced the movie, as well as other movies and TV shows. Then it completely ran off the rails mid-season, relying on the same we-are-all-connected formula over and over again. It ran so far off the rails in season one that it had to be completely rebooted from the ground up in season two (even going so far as to fire the lead actress and bring in Lukas Haas), but by then it was too little, too late.

Heroes also was hurt by the elevation of Sylar. He was great and creepy when he was more in the shadows, but he was not meant to be a front and center character for multiple seasons.

How do you suppose actors on a show like Heroes feel as these seasons progress into inanity?

They aren’t viewers, so they don’t have the distance that allows for more objectivity.

Do they have a sense that the story arcs are meandering into the ether or that the plot has become so convoluted that fans can’t follow what’s happening?

Or are they so focused on the character that they play that they have little sense they’re on a sinking ship?

Torchwood!

It was great when Captain Jack was front and center - then they decided to make boring, annoying Gwen the focus... Nosedive from there on out. I still watched for Captain Jack, but it wasn't the same.

Sleepy Hollow - The Abbie/Ichabod dynamic was waaay more interesting than his boring ass wife (that actress sucked!). After the show creators left, they tried to force a Katrina/Ichabod chemistry and storyline that didn't work at all. Such a shame. The first season rocked!

[quote]How do you suppose actors on a show like Heroes feel as these seasons progress into inanity?

I think they take a leap of faith that there's a "method to the madness" because the show runner is a "genius" or that the show has become such a huge phenomenon that it's too big to fail.

I never got why people thought Heroes was so good, even in the first season.

The overall plot was interesting I suppose, but the dialogue was sooooo bad. Star Wars prequel bad.

I couldn't get into it for that reason.

r164 I can find no series on Netflix called The Bureau

The Fall with Jamie Dornan and Gillian Anderson is another one that would have made an excellent miniseries. Seasons 2 and 3 were totally unnecessary no matter how hot Dornan is.

Homeland should have ended after season 3.

Scream Queens

I gave up on Revenge during Season 2. Maybe I will rewatch it in its entirety. Season 1 was great, one of the few TV shows I actually looked forward to.

[Quote] They have a crazy fanbase who is obsessed with Jensen and Jared and will watch that show til the end of time.

I don't know how they're going to cope when the show actually does end. I guess they'll still have the conventions to distract them.

[Quote] Homeland had a fantastic first season, then became terrible for a long time.

I don't know what they were thinking when they decided to focus so much on Dana.

[Quote] I was going to mention Sleepy Hollow as well. The show's first season was great when it center around Witnesses Addie and Crane and the Horseman who was death and Katrina was in purgatory.

I would love to hear Nicole Beharie talk about her time on this show.

The Leftovers on HBO had a reverse problem. The first season was awful and the last two (which I had to be forced to watch, initially) were practically miraculous.

^same scenario for Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. The first season was so mundane that I quit watching after ten or so episodes. A friend convinced me to go back with reports of a solid arc and great twists. The last two seasons have been fantastic.

Sense8 owns this thread. Second season was such an incredible, boring letdown. And the add on finale with the wedding that went on FOREVER was completely ridiculous.

Kevin Bacon in The Following

There is some missing piece to the entire Sleepy Hollow thing. But no one from that show has gone on record with anything.

The O.C. might be one for some, but I thought it was still watchable up until the end. There weren't any huge jump the shark moments for me and I remember the finale being rather moving. I think killing Marissa off was a strong, solid choice and I liked the new romantic replacement for Ryan. She was cute and funny and I enjoyed watching her. It felt realistic, too, because hot messes like Marissa usually die young anyway. It felt earned to me and what was best about killing her off was that the character of Julie got a lot of really great scenes trying to deal with it and she really grew as a person. She went from fun Joan Collins diva bitch to a real person you could root for. I loved that!

I think what someone else mentioned earlier was true. There were WAY too many episodes in season one. I rewatched the series recently and was stunned. Season one feels like 2 seasons. They could have easily split them in half and had 5 solid seasons.

Nip/Tuck is definitely a show that got worse as it went along. I think they blew their load in season 2 or 3 and everything after that was just awful. I remember it becoming a guest star show where a new celebrity would show up every week. Season 4 felt more like The Love Boat than Nip/Tuck.

I am leaning toward adding Handmaid's Tale to this list. I liked the second season as it went along but when it was all said and done it hit me that the show really didn't really advance the story. It is definitely not a property meant for multiple seasons.

The fun addiction of hate-watching "Brothers & Sisters", aka, The Sally Field Programme, is a high I've been chasing with other shows ever since, but never again achieving the level of that initial high.

The first 2and 1/2 and seasons were a blast ( and fodder for a great DL thread) and then pfffft, the writers stopped. Just stopped.

But the actors kept showing up for work, read whatever half-assed script the writers cobbled together, ABC filmed it and then put it on the air.

[quote] Torchwood! It was great when Captain Jack was front and center - then they decided to make boring, annoying Gwen the focus... Nosedive from there on out. I still watched for Captain Jack, but it wasn't the same.

Season 3 (Children Of Earth) was hands down the best season of Torchwood.

Agree with r187. Loved Taylor and loved Julie's development. Didn't miss Marissa and her whining.

Also agree about The Handmaid's Tale. I found the second season overrated and it became very tedious after awhile.

I love you, R170. Akira!!

Did you see the movie or read the manga, R192? The manga is a masterpiece.

Another vote for Designated Survivor

I tend to agree about The Handmaid's Tale. The second season felt like a very different show, a soap opera set in the dystopian, brutally dark universe, created by Atwood's book, outlined by S1.

r187 Marissa should have been killed off in Season 1.

TrueBlood

What Game of Thrones did right the first season was to kill "main" characters -it raised the stakes and made the threat to characters you liked more palpable.

What they did wrong in later seasons (even though it was in the books in some cases) was to bring them back.

The Charmings: the new Snow White was terrible.

I think the second season of The Handmaid's Tale was very good. But there is a problem brewing. My partner and I tired of Offred/June getting just to the edge of freedom again and again, only to be dragged back to Gillead. I think the show should wrap it up in Season 3. Seeing Offred/June in Gillead with teasing of freedom over and over will get boring. They should make Season 3 about Offred/June finally getting her freedom and the downfall of Gillead. But it's such a big hit for Hulu and garners so much Emmy love, they'll likely keep it going until it sucks.

I'd forgotten about [italic]the Following[/italic]. Good call. Another great concept that couldn't be sustained for more than a season.

"It's a metaphor."

Lost jumped the shark immediately after Sawyer and Kate had sex in the cage. The rest of the series was one very long after-sex cigarette. You kinda wanted to hang around but you knew you would make up an excuse to leave as soon as your hookup got up to pee.

Masters of Sex

Phenomenal first season, straight down the drain after that.

[Quote] Marissa should have been killed off in Season 1.

If only.... Mischa had good chemistry with Ben but i did not get how Ryan put up with her shit for so long. And looking back, there were so many love triangles on the show, it was ridiculous. But i do love season 4 and i thought they did a great job with the final episode.

R187 I agree that the best part of killing Marissa off in the "The OC" was that Julie Cooper was given more to do. She really was the best character on that entire show.

13 Reasons Why owns this thread.

R187 - Nip/Tuck was a phenomenal show and one of my all-time favorites. I do agree with you about the aging stars of yesteryear making appearances in just about every new episode from season 4 on; I quite enjoyed many of the story lines though.

Melinda Clarke was great on The OC. She really deserved more recognition. She had great comic timing and became a stronger person by the end of the show.

And Julie seems like she should be a DL fave.

[quote]Melinda Clarke was great on The OC. She really deserved more recognition.

She went on to become a regular cast member on "Nikita" as the evil Amanda.

No one’s mentioned Ally McBeal yet?

It really was a charming first season. Then it went to grating very quickly and just became a mess.

Yes, and sadly now all Calista Flockhart will be remembered for is being Harrison Ford's wife.

[Quote] And Julie seems like she should be a DL fave.

Juju should be a DL icon.

[Quote] Yes, and sadly now all Calista Flockhart will be remembered for is being Harrison Ford's wife.

To some she's Cat Grant from Supergirl.

It's warming my heart that Melinda Clarke and Julie Cooper are getting so much love on here. She stole the show during The O.C. and I always loved her bitch with a heart of gold schtick. She was very moving in season 4 especially. I'm sad that the series didn't go on for longer, because I actually thought it got better without that annoying Marissa, but the ending they came up with is right up there with Six Feet Under as one of the best in TV history. I found it very moving and seeing Julie go back to college and make something of her life was enough to make this stone cold bitch tear up.

People actually watched the OC?

Baffling.

R215 What's so baffling about that?

British series “Doctor Foster”.

Goliath. Unbelievably charming cast of characters and clever plot the first season, and then dark, impossibly stupid, season two.

I wouldn't even call the first season of "Pretty Little Liars" great, but it was a fun and trashy whodunnit that would have made a better miniseries. How they managed to stretch that shit out to seven seasons will boggle my mind forever.

I would not have minded an entire season of a Julie-Ryan-Luke-Marissa quadrangle

Nip/Tuck should of had the two Doctors fuck - just once. They tried to make Julian gayish but the closest he ever got was fucking Candice Kane. The show would have been so much more interesting if the two leads got drunk one night and had sex.

Or if Julian had fucked Thad Luckinbill, r221.

Hey, R212 - don’t sell Calista short. She will also be remembered for her eating disorder!!

R220 That show had enough triangles. Though i do wish Luke and Anna had stayed on the show.

There was one Nip/Tuck episode in season 2 where they hire a hooker who looks like Julia and have a threesome with her and I thought for sure that this would be when they'd end up fucking, but they didn't. I think for someone who had as much sex as Christian, they should have made him bi at the very least. Ryan Murphy always said the show was a love story between two men.

I love how a couple of queens have turned this into an OC thread.

Thanks, queens!

R222, here's the scene where Thad Luckinbill gets naked for Julian McMahon:

I wish we lived in a world where "dongful" was the default setting for "nude" instead of "assful."

R228, American actors are not as comfortable with full frontal nudity as Europeans.

Really, R229? I did not know that.

[quote] Torchwood! It was great when Captain Jack was front and center - then they decided to make boring, annoying Gwen the focus

But Gwen was always the viewpoint character and co-lead. Or was that the joke?

Say what you will about Fringe, I give them a lot of credit for taking risks. Even though I think the biggest risks were alienating.

I would also argue that Fringe and POI don't fit the bill because they didn't hit their stride til their second seasons.

[quote]I wish we lived in a world where "dongful" was the default setting for "nude" instead of "assful."

It's FX, not HBO. They couldn't show dick even if they wanted to.

All this crap and "Ringer" never even got a second season!

I am surprise no on mention Queer as Folk. The first and second seasons were good. However, every season after that it became a sad soap opera.

There was nothing good about the American QAF, R234. It was crap from alpha to omega.

I was even put off by Sharon Gless, whom everyone seems to love. She just came off as the embarrassing mom who tries too hard.

The British version is great, though.

R226 You're welcome!

[quote]Torchwood! It was great when Captain Jack was front and center - then they decided to make boring, annoying Gwen the focus

'Torchwood' was never going to have the same appeal as 'Doctor Who', so I'm not surprised it ran into problems.

Thad's ass is amazing. Could his cock be better than that delicious ass? Victoria Newman is a dumb bitch giving up that ass.

Thad's ass did look delicious.

Thad’s name is lame.

[quote]Thad's ass is amazing.

Thad's ass in motion for you, R238:

Get the fuck out of here, fucking soap queens.

Nobody cares about a fucking soap in this thread. It's off topic.

F&F.

It's from nip-tuck, information-challenged r242.

Hemlock Grove... all that homoerotic tension in season one completely wasted!

Whatever happened to Julian McMahon? When he was young, before he shaved his body hair off, he was fucking hot!

I still remember that Nip/Tuck episode with Thad. So fucking hot. Wasn't he playing the fuck toy of Richard Chamberlain or something? Even as that show went off the rails, they still managed to get pretty awesome guest stars.

I, too, wonder what happened to Julian McMahon. He hasn't really done much since Nip/Tuck and that never went into syndication, so it's not like he can live off of the residuals. Maybe he can live off the Charmed ones. That seems to have had a healthy life in syndication. He was always incredibly sexy to me. I'm still not sure if it was a choice for the role or what, but I remember him being in great shape in seasons 1 and 2 of Nip/Tuck, in AMAZING shape for season 3, and then he started getting flabbier and less in shape as the series progressed. For some reason, I felt like it was some sort of choice he and the creators were making so that his character couldn't coast by on his looks anymore.

Julian McMahon & Christopher Atkins naked (Wet & Wild Summer):

r247 = Dong-free zone.

[quote]Get the fuck out of here, fucking soap queens. Nobody cares about a fucking soap in this thread. It's off topic.

Yeah! Now piss off and let everyone get back to discussing The OC and Nip/Tuck.